Lengthy letter (4 pages) handwritten and signed by R. Mordechai Gifter, dean of the Telshe yeshiva. Cleveland, Ohio, [10th Tevet] 1958.
Addressed to R. Yechezkel Abramsky at the publication of his Chazon Yechezkel on Tosefta Tractate Nedarim. On the first page he describes his dear disciple who had died young, and to whom the edition was dedicated. The next three pages relate to Torah matters, comments on Chazon Yechezkel and novellae on Tractate Nedarim.
R. Mordechai Gifter (1916-2001), a prominent yeshiva dean and Torah leader in the United States. Born in the United States, he travelled to Lithuania to study in its yeshivas. Already in his youth, he drew close to the Torah leaders of his times, absorbing from them Torah and proper conduct. He exchanged halachic correspondence with leading rabbis in the United States and Lithuania. He returned to the United States just before the Holocaust, after his engagement to the daughter of R. Zalman Bloch, dean of the Telshe yeshiva in Lithuania, and the wedding was held in the U.S. in 1940. After the Holocaust, he reestablished the Telshe yeshiva in the U.S. (together with his uncles R. Eliyahu Meir Bloch and R. Chaim Mordechai Katz, who had come on their own to the U.S. to try and save their families and the yeshiva students who were left behind in Telshe).
R. Mordechai served as lecturer in the Telshe yeshiva in Cleveland and Chicago from 1943, and later as dean of the yeshiva in Cleveland. He imparted to his students exacting standards of profound Torah study and correct Torah conduct (he did not allow any titles of praise on his tombstone except for "taught Torah and edified students of high caliber in Torah and fear of G-d"). In 1976, he immigrated to Eretz Israel and settled in the campus founded for the yeshiva in the Jerusalem hills (presently: Telz Stone; Kiryat Ye'arim). In 1979, after the passing of R. Baruch Sorotzkin the yeshiva dean in the U.S., he returned to the U.S. to lead the yeshiva in Cleveland. He was recognized throughout the Jewish world as one of the authorities of his time, and he served as head of the Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah in the United States.
2 leaves, written on both sides. Official stationery, 20.5 cm. Good condition. Folding marks.
PLEASE NOTE: Some lot descriptions were shortened in translation. For further information, please refer to the Hebrew text.
